Client Success Manager in Chicago, Illinois at Institute of Food Technologists

Summary/Objective

The Client Success Manager (CSM) is a key leader in our mission-driven non-profit, instrumental in delivering on our sponsorship and advertising products supporting tradeshow and advertising clients within the Food and Beverage industry. Serving as the primary bridge between our internal execution teams and our customers, this role will manage the customer success process, including onboarding, collecting creative for all placements, developing and delivering performance reports, and ensuring we have effectively delivered on all agreed upon assets. The CSM’s insights will directly shape how we drive value for exhibitors, sponsors, and advertisers in support of advancing IFT’s mission and vision.

Essential Responsibilities

• Maintain and grow customer retention and NPS across sponsorship and advertising customers by partnering with Senior Account Managers, supporting strategic account planning, building long-term relationships that foster loyalty and growth, and working collaboratively across the IFT Sales team to understand sponsor and advertiser needs, goals, and opportunities.
• Create, implement, and manage sponsor and advertiser onboarding processes, help center content, tutorials, guides, creative collection workflows, tracking, monitoring, and automated reminder systems that improve the customer experience, decrease onboarding and task-completion time, drive deadline achievement, and ensure all content remains relevant and current.
• Manage all elements of customer sponsorship and advertising contracts to ensure agreed-upon deliverables are executed correctly and on time, serving as the primary customer point of contact and liaison throughout campaign implementation to address questions, provide informed responses, coordinate deliverables, align expectations, and support successful campaign launches and execution.
• Respond to and resolve customer inquiries by email, chat, or video call, proactively addressing questions, resolving issues, facilitating feedback loops, identifying and managing implementation-related concerns, and coordinating with internal teams and customers to ensure timely resolutions and improved future campaign execution.
• Analyze, interpret, and communicate performance data and customer insights by creating campaign reports that demonstrate performance and ROI, ensuring timely delivery of post-show and post-campaign reports, monitoring asset and product performance metrics, generating data-driven creative and content recommendations tailored to customer needs, and serving as the internal voice of the customer for Sales, Meetings, and Integrated Communications teams.
• Collaborate with Sales, Meetings, Integrated Communications, and event logistics teams to design, implement, and execute a unified customer experience; identify, design, and implement automated processes that increase efficiency and productivity; develop sponsorship and advertising opportunities; and facilitate cross-functional collaboration that supports immediate needs and sustainable long-term solutions.
• Identify strategic upsell opportunities in collaboration with sales account managers by leveraging performance insights to enhance customer engagement and drive revenue growth, while staying up to date with industry trends, competitor activities, and market developments to identify new business opportunities and maintain a competitive edge.
• Effectively use sales and customer management software, including HubSpot, to store customer communications and conversations, and ensure compliance with industry and legal regulations, best practices, and IFT processes and procedures.

Travel Required

• Occasional domestic travel is expected including the ability to attend occasional evening, weekend, and overnight meetings

Required Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Communications, Food Science, or equivalent
• Demonstrated experience in customer-facing roles within sponsorship and advertising.
• 5+ years experience or demonstrated competency in Customer Success, Client Services, or related role within the sponsorship and advertising industry
• Experience implementing customer success processes and systems that drive KPIs
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Demonstrated project management skills
• Knowledge of database systems and management

Preferred Experience

• HubSpot software
• Microsoft Office Suite
• Experience in association meetings and events
• Experience in the Food and Beverage Industry

Other Duties
This position, and all others at IFT, may be modified at any time. To ensure operational efficiency and meet the changing needs of our customers and our Business, other duties may be assigned as needed.

Physical Requirements
While performing the essential duties of this job, the employee is required to sit and stand for sustained periods of time, frequently talk, hear, use hands and fingers to feel, handle, and operate objects or controls, and occasionally stand, bend, stretch, stoop, kneel and crouch. The employee is required to have close visual acuity to perform an activity such as preparing and analyzing data and figures, transcribing, and viewing a computer terminal.

Compensation & Benefits
Salary Range: $80,000 to 85,000 Per Year (commensurate with experience and qualifications)

Benefits: IFT offers a comprehensive benefits package designed to reward and energize our employees, so they can live a balanced life and maintain their well-being. We offer medical, dental, and vision plans at affordable rates. Life and Long Term Disability insurance is completely free to all employees. Most benefits begin the first of the month following employee’s start date. To learn more about IFT and our excellent benefits, please visit our careers page here: https://www.ift.org/about-ift/work-at-ift

AI may have been used during the recruiting process.
Please visit https://www.hrsource.org/HRS/About/Recruiting_AI_Use_Notice.aspx to learn how.